What about the fishing? In view of the dictum recently rendered by certain inordinately good people and recorded in one of our great religious weeklies, that question is clearly out of order. It has been decided by those who have no question as to their infallibility that it is wicked to catch fish. (Poor Peter! How thoroughly ashamed of himself he would be were he living in this day of ethical enlightenment.) Let it be understood before proceeding further, that our action has historic precedent in the well-known case of the boy and the woodchuck. We had to fish. We were forty miles from the base of supplies. The Doctor and the Junior and the girls and the head of the house and the Chinaman and the Preacher must eat or perish. As each and all manifested a strong prejudice against perishing, some one must fish. The Preacher offers himself as a hesitating violator of that high-toned, transcendental morality which places fishing among the mortal sins, and the Doctor aids and abets him. Just here listen to a word of advice: If you will fish, provide yourself with a friend so unselfish that he will joyously perjure himself by declaring that he does not care anything about the sport and prefers to row the boat. It is important to have good tackle, carefully selected flies, a rod that will stand strain and a line that runs freely; but the _sine qua non_ is a companion whose generosity is so much greater than your own that he will insist upon turning himself into a motor for your benefit. Such a man is the Doctor. May all blessings rest upon him! Those golden hours on the Kootenay were enriched by his companionship, and his unselfishness materially increased the Preacher’s score. Now we are off. The trunks have been unpacked, the “girls” are tidying up the boat, the Junior is busy floating his ships from the shore, and the row-boat, with the Doctor at the oars and the Preacher waving his rod, is rounding the point of rocks to the south. Repeated casts of the flies find nothing doing. At last there is a swirl and a tug. But what sort of a trout is it at the end of the line? He pulls and plunges, but there is never a jump nor any indication of a purpose to break water. It is not much of a fight, anyhow, and the net lifts in a fish the like of which neither Doctor nor Preacher has ever seen before. Large head, enormous mouth, brownish back and sides with yellowish belly, he looks something like a salt water ling. And that was the sum total of the morning’s catch. Not much slaughter of the innocents about that! We ventured to cook that unclassified victim, and he was not bad as food for the starving. Later on the Doctor learned from the hermit--of course we had a hermit--that the stranger is called a “squaw-fish,” although it is said that the proper name is “squawk-fish,” so called from the noise it makes when caught.